How advertising informs to our benefit

To a certain extent, the author is right about advertising working to our benefit. While companies compete with each other, they continuously improve on their advertisements. They understand the significance and importance of a good advertisement. The audience meanwhile, reap necessary information from these advertisements. Hence, advertising is helpful in the sense that they provide useful facts about the product. 

However, i believe advertising is more of a delusion than merely providing information. Advertisements do convey essential information to us, but how about the deleterious ones then? Observance would have told you that advertisements do not state the adverse effects of the product at all. It does not take a genius to know that stating the product's adverse effects would result in lesser purchase. Ads d0 provide essential information, but at the same time it leaves out vital information which might affect us in the long run. Take for example the widely drunk Coke. Studies have shown it is in fact the food colouring that it appears black. It is originally a dark green solution, for the reason that its initial purpose was to act as medication. On top of this is the fact that coke is at pH 3-4, classifying it under the strong acid category. Imagine if the Coca-Cola company had included these facts. We can be certain that the number of coke consumers would decline sharply. Ads are also misleading in the sense that they twist information to convince the public to purchase the product. We often see products in which 4 out of 5 people recommend it. For all you know, the 5 people could be just anybody from the advertising company. While advertising provides information for the public, take note that their objective is to persuade you to buy their product. Hence, in order to do so, they twist facts such that it tilts towards their favour. It is a paradox that advertisers twist information when they are supposed to be providing true, credible facts. It is in fact not common to see that some advertisements do not provide accurate information, or deliberately leave out certain negative facts so as to make it look impressive. Whichever method they use, we can conclude that advertising does not show wholly true content. As such, advertising do not necessarily inform to our benefit.

If I were the creative director of a tobacco company, I will be inventing cigarettes containing less nicotine. I am sure that smokers do understand the dangers of high consumption of tobacco. A low-nicotine cigarette will be a good start for smokers who would like to quit smoking once and for all. While it is important for the company to earn as much profit as possible, I would rather not delude others to purchase products which might cost their life eventually. Afterall, a low-nicotine cigarette is something new too. It is more appropriate to design the cover for the low-nicotine cigarette since they will be grateful to me eventually, for they have kicked the smoking habit.